


Crossroads

by thedevilchicken



Category: Knightfall (TV 2017)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Getting Together, Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24199585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: An injured Landry escapes Paris. Talus arrives in time to help.
Relationships: Landry du Lauzon/Talus
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yujacheong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujacheong/gifts).



Landry has done things in his life that he's not proud of. 

He's killed men, though he supposes the bulk of the lives he's taken were in service to God and so he shouldn't blame himself for that; that's what the Templars were, after all: swords pledged to God. But then he's broken his vows, too, and he can't say he was serving God when he did that. He was serving himself and no one else, and that's why he doesn't deserve this. 

There's a tumbledown farmhouse a day's ride outside Paris, off the road and through the woods, not far from a bend in the river. That was where Talus had directed him to go, and so that was where he'd gone; he'd sent the others on ahead and waited there, bleeding quietly into his clothes. It wasn't his Templar tabard - he knew he could never wear that again - but there was enough blood in the cloth to paint a red cross on it if he'd wanted to. 

It was two full days before Talus arrived and Landry had to admit he'd been close to giving up hope of seeing him again. But he heard the horse, and he readied his sword, and wondered if Louis had sent his men for him in spite of everything he'd learned about his father's motivations, in spite of the fact there was as much Joan in him as there was Philip. When he pulled himself up from the worm-eaten chair, he sat down again immediately. The chair creaked ominously beneath him. He dropped his sword. And Talus came in through the door. 

"Well, shit," he said, looking Landry up and down. "You're a bloody fucking mess. You wouldn't be able to stop me if I tried to kill you just with my thumbs." He held up his thumbs like a demonstration, not that Landry thought he was going to attempt to kill him with them; he didn't, which was fortunate because Landry was fairly sure he was right and he would have succeeded. "Tell me you've not been sat there bleeding for two fucking days."

Landry grimaced. "I could tell you that..." he said, and then trailed off into nothing as he slumped against the table. He could have told him that, but it would've been a lie and they both knew it because that was precisely what he'd been doing. He'd been sitting at the half-rotten kitchen table in a farmhouse that was missing half its roof, waiting, because he couldn't do much else. He hadn't eaten, he'd pissed in the woods and nearly fallen into a patch of stinging nettles with his manhood still dangling from his trousers, and escaping the city had pulled at the wounds Phillip had put in him until he apparently couldn't stop bleeding every time he moved. It had slowed to a thin trickle, or at least it had the last time he'd pulled his shirt away from his torso to look at it, but that didn't change how weak he felt. He'd seen enough injury in his time to know the loss of blood would do that to a man.

"You're a fool," Talus said. "You're a fucking fool with neither the sense nor the bollocks God gave you." Then he huffed out a breath and he put down his sword and Landry promptly passed out where he sat. He wasn't sure it wasn't fitting that the last words he'd hear on Earth would be an insult. If anything, he'd got off too lightly. 

Of course, he didn't die. Talus saved him. Talus saved him _again_.

He woke in a bed. It was a wide bed, though not quite wide enough for the two men it was currently housing, so their shoulders were butted up against each other. Landry couldn't remember there having been a bed in the farmhouse, or much of anything except bits of old furniture full of damp and rot and woodworm and covered up with leaves that had blown in off the trees outside, let alone a bed with a mattress and blankets. It was almost warm, too, even though when he checked under the blanket he was stripped entirely naked except for the bandages around his arm and circling his ribs. 

"Where are we?" Landry asked. His voice was hoarse and his tongue felt large and dry, and turned his head toward Talus. He didn't have to ask who it was he was lying beside; the grey hair and the occasional semi-vocal sigh gave him the answer.

"You don't recognise a monastery when you see one?" Talus asked. "Some fucking Templar you are." Talus left the bed, in his tunic and socks, bare-legged, and Landry shook his head. A monastery, of course. 

"I told them you're my son," Talus said. 

"So you lied." 

"Better that than the alternative, hmm?" 

"You lied to monks." 

"And suddenly you've got a conscience rattling round in there?"

Landry supposed he had a point about that. But that didn't explain why Talus calling him his son felt so completely wrong. 

He slept through the day, except for when Talus made him sit up against the headboard and eat a bowl of stew; seven chews per bite, out of habit if no longer from necessity. He slept through the night, except when Talus woke him up with his incessant pacing, and Landry made him come to bed and settle down. In the morning, Talus examined his wounds; he'd stitched them, Landry found, quite well, though he'd long since ceased to be surprised by Talus' many talents; if the man could fight the way he did, Landry had no issues believing he could handle a needle and thread. Talus' fingers on his skin made him shiver. Talus did not pretend he didn't notice; he raised his eyebrows at him archly then continued tending to his wounds. 

Four days passed there under the monastery's roof. Talus said the abbot had given them permission to remain there until Landry's health was such that they could move on, and Landry sat on a pew in the abbey or he wandered outside in the gardens or he sat on a bench in the cloisters and wondered if he'd ever been meant to be a Templar at all. He'd joined because of Godfrey, he knew that, not from some burning sense of piety within him that had drawn him to the cause. He could never have lived as the monks he saw at the abbey did, with their long robes and their tonsures and their quiet dedication. His own dedication had been loud and brief and thoroughly inconstant, more like a battle cry than a prayer. The monastery brought that into sharp focus. 

And sometimes, in the abbey or the gardens or the cloisters, as the late winter snow fell, he saw Talus. Sometimes he was in animated conversation with the abbot; Landry wondered if they'd known each other once, in the Holy Land or somewhere else, before that. Perhaps the man had been a Templar once but his bearing was more Benedictine than swordsman. Talus, on the other hand, was the opposite way around - he was more warrior than monk, like all the brotherhood had been, carrying himself like he was ready to fight, even within the abbey's walls.

He watched him. He watched him walk, and talk, and pray, sat beside him in the refectory with the brothers when it was time to eat, slept beside him in bed at night. Then, when Talus touched his skin to change his dressing on the fourth night, Landry flinched and Talus laughed. 

"So that's how it is," he said. "Five minutes out the Order and you're on the lookout for your next conquest?" But his tone lacked its usual sting. His hands didn't move away. And, in the night, when Talus' hands strayed over his skin again, when they dipped down between Landry's thighs, he understood maybe what Talus had said hadn't been all about him. They had no Order left, after all.

"I suppose you've some idea how this works," Talus said. 

"About as much as you, I imagine," Landry replied. "This will come as a surprise to you, I know, but I've not committed every sin on Earth."

Talus laughed. They muddled through it. If it was a sin, they committed it together, and in the morning they left the quiet of the abbey. They were neither of them meant for that life, Landry thinks; they've both lived loudly, not just him. And perhaps he doesn't deserve Talus' loyalty, or his companionship, but he'd like to think it's something he can at least try to repay in kind.

Now, they make their way forward. Landry knows where the others will be waiting, in a place that's safe and not a half-ruined farmhouse that will be stained with his blood until the rain through the gaping roof washes it away, and he wonders if they should really go there or if leaving them would be the safest way. His daughter would grow up without a father, but if he goes to her then she might never grow at all. 

There's a fork in the road ahead and Landry knows they have a decision to make. Talus knows it, too. They haven't discussed it, but Talus is not a simple man. 

But what Landry knows is that whatever he decides, they'll take that path together.


End file.
